Joe Sanchez and Leslie Jarmon - The Educators Coop

My students began logging into Second Life on Tuesday night and most of them have spent between 1-2 hours in SL. In class today (Thursday) i asked them to use one word to describe their experience so far. They came up with interesting words that reinforce the work I’ve done on the Second Life learning curve, particularly in regards to the user experience.

As a caveat, I wanted my students to have a true first time experience so i had them log in to SL on their own and they started at orientation Island. For this particular course since one of our goals is to evaluate virtual worlds as a work platform it is important for me to have the students experience what an average user experiences when they first join Second Life. They need to understand why virtual worlds and SL in particular have such a low retention rate for first time users. If this class wasn’t an information studies course I would not have them go through (dis)orientation, instead I would have them start at NMC and I would be there to immeadiatly teleport them to my class island (Similar to the way we setup the Girlstart 4 day Teen SL camp)

Why are these words important? First we need to acknowledge that the common perception around the SLED community that students will naturally (as in digital native…) love Second Life is a myth. This is my six semester teaching undergrads in Second Life and i can tell you that most students are disappointed with SL and they expect much more from SL than what is there. Students explained that the words “boring”, “empty”, “ugly” referred to the graphics, the “feel” of SL, and low polygon count of the world when compared to online games they have played. A few of them laughed at the “stretched-out” textures that were plaster all over the virtual world. Seriously, these students are not impressed by the graphics of Second Life in the same kind of ways that educators are. One student said, Sl looks a little better than Runscape but nowhere near early Everquest.

This part is for Linden Lab… It’s been a few years now that I’ve been tracking the user experience of students and they are still saying the same things about the interface and client…Listen to these words - “frustrating”, “tedious”, “awkward”, “complicated”. The students were describing how difficult it is to leave orientation island and to understand the metaphors of an inventory, islands, welcome area, orientation area, base hair and prim hair, walking “into” the water..etc…

Some of the positive things the students mentioned were “advanced”, “friendly”, “malleable”, and “addicting”. The students were amazed at the amount of user-generated content in SL and that people they met in SL were overall friendly and would give them things. They felt the ability to edit their appearance to be addicting and many spent way more time on that than they thought. Intrestingly, the students all the way back to Fall 2006 said they same things about their avatars and avatar customization became a key component in the design of a roleplay activity designed for an English course (picture below, paper here)

Now for the last word…”Porn”…not much to say except to acknowledge that SL has a lot of porn and that as educators we need to prepare students to the likely possibility that at some point they will encounter porn in Second Life.

At the end of the semester I will ask students to again describe SL in one word and I will report the words back on the o’l blog. It’ll be interesting to see if/how they change.
joe

The semester has begun and i have 20 new students with an additional 13 on the wait-list for my Working in Virtual Worlds course. As their first assignment i had them all create a one-minute video introducing themselves to the class. They had to use pictures, a soundtrack, a voiceover and post the final video on youtube. The class started last Thursday so they had all weekend to work on it, the project was due yesterday (tuesday). 18 out of 19 students completed the project without a problem, one student “forgot” and another student posted the file wrong on youtube. All in all i think the assignment was a success and we had a great time watching all of the videos in class.

In my course I emphasize the importance of the narrative and storytelling. This intro assignment is their first attempt at telling a story and using digital media to help them express their identity. When i first announced the assignment the students were intimidated by the task, but once I broke it down into the core parts, 8 pictures, a theme song, a title, and a voiceover they quickly understood that creating a short movie/slideshow is actually not that hard. As you will see, many of them had fun with it. Next week they will be using Second Life to tell a story in their virtual condos, they have to setup their SL accounts between now and our next class (Thursday) and they will have a full week to decorate the condos.

Here are a few of my students…

I also made a one-minute intro video for the class,

The last few weeks I’ve been working with Girlstart
on a summer camp in Teen Second Life. My Teen avatar is pictured above, Stem Skytower is the name. The camp attendees included 19 high school juniors the first week and 23 the second week. The girls came into TSL without any experience. Following a 4 day curriculum based on my undergraduate class, the girls were able to create extraordinary exhibits about women in technology, girls in gaming, and other STEM (science technology, engineering, math) topics.

I’ll be posting more about the projects and the data we collected in the process. My initial reading of the surveys show that this curriculum once again breaks the Second Life learning curve.

We submitted a panel to SXSW (South by Southwest SXSW) so if you have time I’d appreciate a vote : )

Gaming as a Gateway Drug: Getting Girls Interested in Technology

Wanted: Girl Gamers! It’s not just about playing, but using play to ignite a crucial spark. This session will explore how educators, parents and the community can use video games to attract girls to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, math).
vote here

This morning (7/10/08) at 10am CST I brought my students at the University of Texas at Austin into Lively for a class session. We met in Lively for a little over an hour. During that time we built a room for the Educators Coop and taught each other how to use various tools such as embed URLS into objects, embed youtube movies into objects, and change the music stream in the room. We had a pretty good time playing with the default animations such as body slam and punch. Overall as a class we found it easy to use though very limiting since we couldn’t create our content. After a few minutes we had added just about every type of object into the room and there was little to do after that. We had a lot of fun discovering and i think my students enjoyed seeing me in a position where i was asking them for advice about building and navigating in a virtual world

We did visit the Linden lab room built by Pathfinder but there were way too many people there and we experienced a lot of lag. I choose a pig avatar and as you can see my students picked a variety of other types of avatars. It will be interesting to see what Lively becomes. I’m most excited by the browser-based client and the ability to embed rooms into web pages..especially facebook.

The room we made is here http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=6257502609839847777 ….

Tonight the students in my Working in Virtual class will present a panel in SL about their experiences learning in Second Life. The panel will begin with a short introduction and description of their projects. We will then break into groups for student led tours of their builds. Following the tours the students will participate in a Q/A session with the audience to discuss their experience in SL as learners. My students created three areas, a Quidditch arena, a Wellness Center, and a replica of an Austin bar and grill called Cain Ables. The students used half an island to build their projects and while they didn’t need the space they did need the prims… Below are pictures of their builds and an invitation to attend their event.

You are invited to attend a special Panel session “SL The Student
Experience” to be held on Wednesday July 9 at 5:30PM at the Educators
Coop 1. In this session students enrolled in the undergraduate summer
course Working in Virtual Worlds taught by Joe Sanchez aka North Lamar
at the University of Texas at Austin will discuss the student
experience of learning in Second Life. The Event will feature samples
of student work and a Q/A session with the students and instructor.
This will be an opportunity to hear from the students’ point of view
of the highs and lows, challenges and opportunities of using Second
Life in a university course. Projects include a playable Quidditch
game, a reproduction of Cane and Abels (real life bar and grill), and
a wellness center.
When: Wednesday, July 9, 5:30PM (SLT)
Where: The Educators Coop 1 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Educators%20Coop%201/51/55/22
Overflow Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Educators%20Coop%202/247/24/30
** This event is free and open to the public; - Sponsored by students
of INF315e **

Henry Stokes (my conference roommate) hosted a Wellness fair as part of Loriene Roy’s presidential initiative for workplace wellness. He did a fantastic job creating a day long program that included sessions on healthy eating, chair pilates, office yoga, hula dancing, and Dance dance revolution among others…

I have never done pilates before but i must admit that i found the stretching to be very relaxing and I may look into taking a class when i return to Austin. My back had been tightening up the last few days since i have been walking around the conference area with a loaded backpack and sitting for hours at a time. The simple movements felt great and i could feel my spine straighten out towards the end of the mini-workout…

The Hula dance was really fun. My Hawaiian brother Annalou sang and taught us a short dance. It was great to see him interact with audience, he explained the history of the particular song he was singing and explained each movement of the dance making it easy to follow. The steps were..push the sun, search the ocean, pick the berries, welcome the Earth, and get nasty LOL… He was great

Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) reception has been the highlight of my week. I was able to reconnect with Annalou whose wife sang songs for us on her ukulele. APALA knows how to let loose with beautiful song and dance. See the pictures below to get a feel of the reception….

Look, another SL librarian!

Saturday i was part of a panel that presented a talk about virtual worlds and communities hosted by Tom Peters. We had a great turnout both in Second life and at the face to face conference. My part of talk focused on the why the Metaverse is important to the American Library Association and why the study of it falls into our domain. The audience seemed receptive to the ideas i think Tom wlll be posting the the session as a podcast on his website. I will post the link when it is available.

At the end of Tom’s talk he asked for a show of hands to see how many people were in virtual worlds other than Second Life…the picture is below

After the talk i had a chance to meet and give long over due hugs to fellow Educators Coop members Lori Momiji. I love meeting SL friends in RL and on my back to the hotel i was able to take a snapshot of three wonderful Information ISland reference desk volunteers. What a great day!

The evening was capped off with the School of Information Alumni recpetion hosted in the Sweet Suite. Below is a pic of the firework show from Disney land that is viewable from our balcony…mmm dessert, these things were yummy

Gaming night was quite a bit of fun with a few unexpected surprises. ALA President Loriene Roy, an avid gamer, gave out the first Presidential Citations for Gaming in the Libraries. 3 citations were awarded, one for Innovation in Education, Innovation in Library Programs, and Innovation in Technology. What i liked about Gaming Night was the mix of table games and video console games. Many people were playing turn-based board games and i learned about quite a few new board games such as 10 days in the USA

The hall was setup with four projection screens with Dance Dance Revolution, Mario cart, Wii Sports, and Rock Band. It was fun watching people discover the Wii, for many people last night was the first time they had ever seen or played a Wii. I have a feeling that many will be purchasing a Wii when they get back home.

I had an embarrassing moment while playing Rock band. I was asked to play with a group of four Rock band Ringers on Expert level so we could show the crowd the complexities of the game. The other three guys were really good…I was handed the microphone and asked to sing Welcome Home from Coheed and Cambria….I failed out within the first few bars…BUt i later made up for it with a decent rendition on Enter Sandman from Metallica.

All in all Gaming Night was a lot of fun and it served in connecting the traditional board gamers with the newer video-gamers and I think both groups gained respect for each other and saw more similarities than differences.

This last year I have been mentoring a group from the Emerging Leaders Program within ALA. The Emerging Leaders are a group of librarians that have less than 5 years experience in the field or are 35 or younger. I was asked to serve as a mentor for a group of five Emerging Leaders as they worked on one of Loriene Roy’s Presidential Initiatives. My group was originally tasked to construct a database of capstone projects and field-based learning activities being used in MLIS programs (Masters of Library and Information Science). As luck would have it…none of the emerging leaders in my group had the technical background to program a database so we altered the project based on their skill set.

My group ended up conducting a needs assessment and feature analysis based on survey results from 92 users. They were able to confirm that a database of projects is a good idea and needed but they also identified a need to create a process that would allow distance education students to find service learning projects in their local areas. For example, if a student was enrolled in a distance education program at North Texas University but they lived in New York, what types of resources are available that can help that student find an internship or field-based work in another state. Their project was well received and we plan on submitting an IRB application so that we can publish the results or reuse the survey data in order to publish the results.

Now I’m off to the Library Champions fundraiser and then open Gaming night

The 5th ALA Forum on Education was a huge success. We were successful in creating an interactive event for a large group of people. Rae-Anne Montague and Clara Chu provided a great foundation for the attendees about Service Learning and the role/s of those performing the service/learning and the critical their of reflection as part of the learning and service process.

The Researchpalooza was timed perfectly and the presentors provided a wide variety of service learning projects ranging from services to the elderly through service learning in prisons. It was a fascinating range of projects and ideas.

The group discussions were very powerful and participants were engaged. What i love about the event is the mix of students, professionals, and faculty all participating on a level playing field. I’ll post more later : )